


Song for Whoever

by Evilsnowswan



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa, Rumbelle Secret Santa 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-02 21:56:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8684896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilsnowswan/pseuds/Evilsnowswan
Summary: Lonely, cynical musician meets warm and bubbly fangirl with spice.[Rumbelle music!AU] [RSS 2016] [Prompt: “Rumple, lonely rockstar. Belle, fangirl.”]- Nominated for Best One-Shot in The Espenson Awards 2017 - for belleandherrumple on tumblrbeta: acautionarytale





	

**Author's Note:**

> Watch the trailer [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is09eZ5Lx-0)

“Excuse me.”

 _The first thing he knew about her was the sound of her voice on a random Saturday_.

If people had any idea just how telling their voices were, how revealing, they would keep their mouths shut more often - and he would be grateful for it. Hers wasn’t unpleasant to listen to _per se_ \- unlike so many others he had had the misfortune of encountering over the years - but not quite melodic either. She spoke with a softly cushioned drawl that rose and peaked at the end of her sentences when she was asking rather than telling, and quivered ever so slightly from nerves ( _that one he learnt about in greater detail later_ ). All washed out and watered down from exposure and wear, it wasn’t particularly pretty a voice, her voice, but interesting enough for him to turn his head and acknowledge her presence.

“Uh, I-”  She was a young thing who blushed when she talked ( _which she did with both her pretty mouth and hands_ ). Had she worn the shirt, skirt, tights and ridiculous shoes this place put on its waitresses, she could have passed for one of them, which was why he felt the sudden desire for a Pint of Guinness. The one in front of him was only half-empty, but piss warm, and he wouldn’t have minded another.

“Yes, dearie?”

She smiled shyly. “I didn't mean to bother you..;” His hand was halfway to his pocket, making an assumption and executing the corresponding action before his brain had caught up. She didn’t sound like a smoker and he had none to spare. “I just… aren’t you, you know,  _Spinning Wheel_?”

She couldn’t possibly have known that name. Or him. And yet here she was, biting down on her bottom lip and batting her long eyelashes at him in that annoyingly sweet fashion.

“What if I am?”

Her face lit up. “Could I maybe get your autograph?”

He quirked a brow at her.

“Sorry, too forward?”

He watched her fumble with her hands, and hair, and breathing. She wasn’t old enough. She didn’t own records or know what a mixtape was. Her home most likely didn't hold any physical copies of whatever music her generation listened to. She looked young enough for that.

While he had toured the world - a different town, a different city, a different country every night - she had been a mere twinkle in her father's eye. Hell, he was old enough to  _be_ her father. Was  _she_ old enough to be here? She had to be mistaking him for someone else.

“You sure you got the right guy, sweetheart?”

She hesitated. “You were playing at the _Dog and Broom_ the other night-” asking, not telling “-great show by the way.” She grinned. “ _Love_ your songs.”

“That so?”

Once upon a time, he would have felt flattered. Once upon a time, he would have seized the opportunity and roped her into some deep conversation or other until she lay entangled in his words and sheets.

“Yes. You write all the songs, don't you?”

Not many people knew that - even though it said so on the sleeves and inlays.

“What about it?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said after a moment. “You make it sound like you hate it. The music.”

Another statement-question, voice going up at the end - and eyebrows too. It wasn't the music he hated, but what came with it, what it had turned him into. But he could hardly tell her that.

“What do you like about it?”

The questions, they came as a reflex, as natural as breathing to him - even if they were everything but. For all it was worth though, she _was_ in his face - and perhaps picking at her brain a reasonable price to ask for his time. From the look on her face he knew she would pay, pay anything he asked of her and pay it gladly.

“It’s… _different_ ,” she said, and he nearly groaned. _How original_. Well, he was one to talk about that. “Lyrics are shite, though.”

He barked a laugh. Girl had spunk. He’d have to give her that.

“Sorry, too forward again.”

His gaze glued itself to the white of her teeth as they crashed into soft, lush pink once more. There was a small gap between her front teeth and a tiny scar on her upper lip.

“No, no, I value honesty.”

She smiled at him. “Even the bad kind?”

“Aye,” He took a sip of his drink, watching her over the rim of the glass. “Even that.”

“Interesting.”

So easy. It would be _so_ easy. Don’t ask, just buy her a drink.

They needed the money. He needed the money - which was why he spent his weekends in rundown, shabby places like this one. Why he was still talking to her, and also why he shouldn’t be. She was young and golden and would easily turn to straw under his calloused fingertips.

“The music is honest, too,” she said, slowly. “But the lyrics… it’s like you’re telling two separate stories at the same time, like there are…  different…  truths-” Gesturing with her hands, she cut herself off, laughed. “I’m not making any sense here. Sorry.”

Poor, gullible girl.

He looked at her - bright blue eyes and heated cheeks - pondering her youth and the wisdom in her words that did not betray it.

“No, dearie, indeed you’re not,” His voice was cold, colder perhaps than it needed to be. “And I don’t do autographs.”

He might as well have doused her in ice water. Lips parting, she blinked. Once. Twice. But this befuddled little creature didn’t quiver before any beast and the look of disapproval and offense flashing across her features was almost a relief.

“... and you let me ramble like an idiot anyway. Gee, thanks.”  

He’d bed them - even wed them - for material, but not her. He told himself he wasn’t that desperate.

They both hesitated. He downed his beer. It was disgusting.

“Enjoy your drink, good evening.”

Her face was poetry and her eyes fire.  

She deserved better than to be butchered and sliced into neat little mediocre music, scribbled onto the back of a parking ticket; better than to be sucked in and devoured by some soulless tribute to the legions of young female consumers of endless, mindless love songs. Her beauty was not meant for such barbarics.

She turned on her heel and left.

A little away from him, hair flipped over one shoulder, she leaned on the bar and lolled her head to the side. She wasn't drunk, but like young things often did, probably liked to give the impression that she was. The barman was there to take her order in a flash, of course, his piggy eyes dropping to her neckline. She pushed her lips out just a little, giggled girlishly ( _a horrible sound_ ), and twiddled her hair in that seemingly absent-minded way he was already starting to know, before skipping off to mix and mingle a moment later, not a care in the world, a brightly colored drink ( _complete with ridiculous paper umbrella and fruit slice_ ) clutched in her hand.

He watched her dance, reached for the coaster and got out his pen.

***

 _The second thing he knew about her was her face in a smoke-filled room_.

He looked out over the crowd. There must have been at least a hundred people here tonight - all young and hip, mostly students from the nearby university ready to unwind, have a good time and kill a couple brain cells. Not a bad turn out, even if most of them had probably turned up by chance rather than to hear them play.

He knew some had to be staring right back at him, but thankfully if they were, he couldn’t see their faces from the stage. The staring always made him nervous. He prefered them engrossed in their drinks and shouted conversations, their milky faces swimming in the dim blue and purple lights of the bar.

He clutched tightly to his Gibson Memphis, fingers slipping, nerves trying to take over his body, but nerves only improved the pizzicato parts of his performance. You had to be a little afraid to be any good.

His heart kept time with the drums, pumping the music through his veins as he began losing himself in it. Eventually, as the set progressed, he lost all sense of everything - except for the sting of the strings, the dusty heat of the lime lights burning his face and neck, and the warming leather clinging to his skin.

Then, he saw her.

Head tilted back, eyes closed, she was dancing to the music, spinning with it, her arms outstretched as if to hug the whole world. Everyone around her seemed eager to bathe in her light, trying to drink in her vivacity, but as he watched her, it was clear that she stood absolutely alone.

To his left, Hatter was hunched over his keys, hitting the black and white like a madman, his voice taking on that far-away edge that added to the rough and raw behind the words.

She kept her eyes closed, twirling her imaginary drumsticks in the air expertly between beats, unbothered by the strands of hair that had twisted loose from her ponytail.

Eyes fixed, looking at the crowd without seeing it, he shuffled closer to the drums, as he often did; his feet keeping her rhythm now, body swaying to her private dance without shame, allowing it to paint over everything else, so that only their harmony remained.

He saw only her and the music flowed through his cerebral cortex like warmed milk with honey, relaxing him, enabling the notes to penetrate to the parts of him he usually kept hidden away, firmly under lock and key. Even if a part of him hated it, music could never be something superfluous to him, something shallow or meaningless. Music was about more than just sales.

She turned those charged blue eyes on him then and they told him that she knew the deepest, darkest secrets of the world, knew _his_ secrets, and wasn't telling anyone. Her gaze, it gave him chills, shivers running through him like that moment you went outside and felt the buzz in the air when it was just about to rain. The stuffy air tasted like late autumn on his dry lips and from that very moment onward, part of him loved part of her.

He did not know her name, but loved her anyway.

He knew it wasn’t just him, every person in the room was in love with _the dancing girl_ tonight. She radiated life, and joy, and abundant energy; had that wonderful intensity about her that simply fascinated everyone. He wanted to reach for her as she began twirling again, take her hand, and pull her onto the stage with him. _Her_.

He wanted to pick her out of all of them, and tell her how she was different. How they both knew that there was beauty in the brutal and life was just a bunch of memories - so mangled and blurred together, that when you looked at them from afar they seemed like your greatest masterpiece.

He wanted a love to shatter all other loves. He wanted _her_ love.

She was in his head, his hands, her voice tingling in his fingertips, her face in the quivering strings as he played the chords and the _Rabbit Hole_ was hundreds of conversations told in loud voices, all of them competing with the music, but never coming close; hundreds of eyes and moving bodies, but none of them comparing.

After the music had died, after the bowing, clapping, and cheering that still reverberated in his bones, he wound his way through the warm, sticky bodies to order a drink - the dark local beer. But before it was poured, he already felt someone melting their body to his from behind, squeezing past to take the seat next to him at the bar - and he instantly _knew_ , knew before he turned his head, before she had said a single word.

***

 _The third thing he knew about her was her scent in the dark_.  

The smell of the place hadn’t changed much over the years. Once it had been of cigarette smoke only, the bitter perfume that clung to clothing, skin, and furniture alike. Now it was just that, stale beer and dank body odour. There were establishments these days that were more like fancy restaurants - all clean with polite waiting staff ( _who smiled through their teeth_ ), but not this one, not here. Not the _Rabbit Hole_. It had always been a den of debauchery, alcoholism, and the great unwashed of the town. It still was. No one came here with anything wholesome in mind.

She must have known that.

The bar curved into the empty space, a dark shape in the quiet room. Through the windows, the dirty diamonds of lead panes, the sallow light of the street lamps trickled in and danced across the floor towards them.

Under cover of the night they lay, amongst instruments and empty cups, her in his arms, cradled against his chest, soft and smelling of cinnamon. She looked up at him - sleepily, blinking - like he hung the moon and stars in the night sky, but the night was cold and overcast and he had no such powers.

“Sorry,” he said, aware of her skin against his, their mingling, uneven heartbeats.

“F-for what?” Her voice stumbled to find a foothold in the dark. “It’s --- that was… _amazing_.”

“I don’t usually…” _Lies, all lies_.

Once upon a time, he had lived for the music. Live music made him tingle, even if it was only a solitary instrument played, or one singing voice. It made his fingers drum and his feet tap. It broke through the everyday monotony, through the bleak and the hopeless. ( _Music didn't save your life, it gave you the strength and willpower to save yourself; which was its true beauty_.) There was something about the vibrations that felt so right, as if they were liquid energy seeping right through his skin. Perhaps that was why he had learnt to play so well - he felt it, craved it, needed it to survive.

His hands were his instrument - and he had made her dance to his tune, again and again.

“We shouldn’t have-”

She had allowed him to hold her hand, to hold her, dancing in an emptying bar past midnight.

Her breathing hitched. “W-was it… _bad_?”

She must have _known_ , known he would let go eventually, would love her less and less with every passing minute, would perhaps love the girl before her and the girl who came after her, but never truly her.

“No, sweetheart.”

“Then what?”

She was brave, so brave for her very attempt at loving someone like him. So strong to open up and let him in, even when he would never love her the way she deserved to be loved. He admired her courageous heart for it, for trusting him, for caring enough to let him shatter it to pieces.

He sighed. “You are young. You don’t understand.”

She squirmed and pulled away from him, and he let her. “That’s bullshit! And I’m not your _sweetheart_. I _wanted_ this!”

He was glad to see he hadn’t yet managed to smother her flame.

“Whatever you say, dearie.”

She felt around for her white top and pulled it over her head. The front was cut out and partly see-through, so he still saw more than he had any right to. She hadn’t put her black bra back on underneath.

“How the hell did you get like this?”

She wanted a love that mimicked the drivel playing on the radio. The endless, same-y love songs that promised eternal, undying love. But all he had to offer was something superficial, shallow, and finite. A love that would only be interested in her long enough for her to part with her story, long enough for him to write the songs that made him money.

“I am a difficult man to love,” he said, a beautifully constructed, steadily building ballad with a lyric about the exploitative nature of volatile love already beginning to take form in the back of his mind. He truly was a monster.

“That’s cheap,” her eyes narrowed, “and a lie.” He watched her fumble with her jeans. “You’re just… _afraid!_ ” The word exploded out of her in a breathless gasp as she turned towards him again. “Like you were when we first met. You can’t ever take a chance, can you?”

“Go,” he said.

“Go?”

“I don’t want you anymore, dearie.”

He was being cruel, but it was for her own good. If she didn’t know to protect herself from someone like him, he would have to do it for her. She would thank him later.

She swallowed hard, sniffled. The sound severed his heart in half.

“You’re a coward, _Rowan Gold!_ ” She ran the back of her hand over her eyes hastily. “And no matter how thick you make your skin, that won’t change.”    

“I’m not a coward. It’s quite simple, really. My music, _my career_ , means more to me than _you_.”

She snorted. “No. No, it _doesn’t_. You just don’t have the courage to let me in.” She got to her feet, looking around for her trainers, toes curling and uncurling on the cold, diamond-patterned tiles. “You know what?! So be it then! But you’re going to regret it.”

Yes, yes, he would. But that was not for her to know.

“Thanks for buying my dribble, dearie.” Were the last words he ever said to her, as she stormed out of the little, shabby building in the small, sleepy town that he’d leave the next morning and wouldn't return to for many a year. Not because he was _afraid_ , no, certainly not that, but he wanted to spare  _her_ the agony of ever running into him again.  

He only had one regret.

He had never learnt her name, but no matter how far he traveled, he could not forget her face.

And so he continued to love her in the songs he wrote instead, love her in every note and every word, wondering if she ever listened to them - wherever she was now, whatever she was doing, and whoever held her bright, beautiful heart.

They’d better given it a real good home.

**Author's Note:**

> Title reference: Heaton, Paul, and Dave Rotheray. Song for Whoever. The Beautiful South. Mike Hedges, John Rowley, 1989. [CD].
>
>>   
> _Cheap, never cheap_  
>  _I'll sing you songs till you're asleep_  
>  _When you've gone upstairs I'll creep_  
>  _And write it all down, down, down, down_ (line 5-8).


End file.
